I prefer testing software under dispassionate circumstances, but today's review of Recuva was performed with beads of sweat running down my forehead: My photos were missing! Could Recuva get them back?
It happened like this: I recently returned from a business trip only to find that half of the photos I had taken were simply missing from the SD card that was in the camera. Total disaster...it's not like I could just hop on the subway and retake the pictures; I had been in Spain!
Somehow, and I still have no idea the cause, the photos were no longer visible in the directory listing, nor were they in the trash.
After a brief Google search I decided to take Recuva (from the Brooklyn pronunciation for "recover") for a spin. I was really hesitant to let just any program have at my precious SD card. But, when I found that piriform (makers of the excellent registry cleaner "cccleaner") had a solution, I decided to give it a shot. After all, I had let their programs touch my registry with no ill effects.
The program couldn't be easier to use: You download the file, run the setup program, and start the application: as easy as 1,2,3.
But, would it work? First you tell the program what kind of files you're looking to recover with recuva (or is it recuva with recover? Whatevah: pictures, music, documents, videos or "everything".
The program can search your hard disk, but in my case I just wanted it to locate the files on my bad SD card, so I specified it as the location. You can let it search everywhere on your computer or in specific, predefined locations if you need help.
The first time I ran the program I ran the simple search. It didn't take more than a few seconds and didn't find any of the missing pictures. I was crest fallen.
I ran it a second time, this time checking off "Enable Deep Scan". I wasn't sure what it did, but it sounded like a cross between something that would be done on an X-Files episode and a porn film. Nervous, I pressed the button hoping I'd get probed and not screwed.
The scan took quite a while... and then: amazingly my pictures started showing up! Hundreds of them.
Recuva couldn't get them all back, but more than ninety percent were fully recovered. Amazing.
My hat is off to the programmers at Piriform! I don't know how the magic worked, but you did it. And you did it with style: a user friendly interface that doesn't get in the way or seem overly complex. This is particularly welcome in a program that you're most likely to use when you're under the stress of having lost a valuable document or photo.
Recuva is a five-star product...and given its price (free) it should really get an extra star. You can find it at www.recuva.com.
